My Blog

Who is old enough to still visualize Americans in white blindfolds being dragged out of our Embassy in Iran November 4, 1979? Or call up the images of those 56 Americans with diplomatic immunity being paraded blindfolded through the jeering Tehran crowds by the newly...

Thoreau went to the woods at age 28 because he wanted “to live deliberately.” Kaya Clark stayed in the marsh at age six because she was abandoned. Thoreau was real. Kaya is fictional. Thoreau stayed in his one room cabin for two years. Kaya stayed in her shack until...

“To be or not to be,” Hamlet asks himself. While it isn’t today’s national debate “to impeach or not to impeach,” it’s still pretty serious. Hamlet is talking about suicide. And with good cause! Consider that Hamlet’s honorable father King Hamlet, Sr. has been...

Two days after the joy of birthdaying our newly nine-year-old grandchildren twins, I am backcombing my hair for dinner out with friends when my cell phone rings. Caller ID Palm City, Florida. Must be my younger sister Nancy—half, actually, as we share a father. Male...

“Here once the embattled farmers stood and fired…” Lexington, April 1775, we know from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Concord Hymn. But this week 160 Aprils after Lexington is a perfect time to remember the second most famous “shot heard round the world” in Augusta GA. And...

Another close title contender was Of Wounds and Other Causes. Fortunately Ernest Hemingway went with his double entendre title, Farewell To Arms, the WW I novel about the American soldier Lt. Frederic Henry going AWOL to “arms” in Italy; and, in the end, also losing...